Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Pairing it Down: Gilgamesh's Final Resting Place

by Kiel Howell

Salutations dear readers! This week is an exceptionally
interesting topic. Gilgamesh is an ancient story written as a poem . It is a
story about a great and possibly half-divine man for whom the gods were forced
to create a wild man—Enkidu—to distract him so he wouldn't oppress Uruk.

You would think that this article would write itself, eh?
There's divine and half-divine beings, living creations of the gods (Enkidu),
terrible monstrosities (Humbaba), pride (killing the Bull of Heaven), fall (the
death of Enkidu), the search for eternal life, and attaining eternal life
through story.

This is actually making it harder. One of the biggest
writing blocks I suffer from is when I tackle a historical or mythological
subject. It is because I know the audience of TTRPGs are usually more
well-versed in these types of things and there are many historians and
mythologists (is that a profession?) who play and possibly read what I write.
Those are the readers who I would try to please and in so pursuing, fail.

You have to push through that thought. It can be fear of
number-crunchers, fear of your editor, or any kind of fear you possess when it
comes to who will be reading your material.

Pushing through then. An interesting thing about Gilgamesh:
he was buried under the Euphrates river bed. In fact, the people had to divert
the river's flow to do this. That was around the 2,500 BC.

All the amazing things that are described about Gilgamesh
and I focus on how he was buried. Perhaps, then, I shouldn't focus on Gilgamesh
the man or even the myth. What is Gilgamesh's story in modern times? It is a
story like many others; pride, struggle, fall, and eventual greatness. The
story of Gilgamesh, while having a large number of amazing things to use as
inspiration for writing, is the inspiration itself. I think (and this is
completely personal) that a surviving story about a man from 2,500 years before
Christ was born is something to be used as a theme or in world building.

Every world needs a theme and to be built with its own
legends, pantheons, and peoples. Some worlds have a dark and horror-tinged
theme. Others are reflections of our own modern societies. Some worlds are
populated with Heracles, Perseus, and the Flash while yet others are populated
by Bob the mechanic, Stacy the factory worker, and Lisa the choir director. If
I overlay the story of Gilgamesh onto my world then I have a race of gigantic
men who look like lions, a land of oracles and sages, and a mysterious tomb at
the bottom of the river bed containing the Great Wall-Builder King from
centuries ago. Perhaps that world is named Enkidou since Gilgamesh's friend was
killed as a result of Gilgamesh's actions against the creation of the gods (the
Bull of Heaven).

What I'm pairing down this week is an idea for a world in
its pre-nascent stage. I've just described four things about a world that can
lead to an infinite number of other elements of the world. I will leave it to
you, the reader, to come up with more. Please leave any suggestions (or
challenges!) for this amniotic world in the comments and I'll do my best to
answer (or accept). Until next time friends in which I tackle Firefly as a theme. Browncoats unite!

Traits: Rather than go into the extensive list of traits out there I will simply point out anything that adds +2 to your initiative, shor...

A member fo the Pathfinder Community

"This website uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Publishing, LLC, which are used under Paizo's Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This website, is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Publishing. For more information about Paizo's Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Publishing and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com."